As is being reported in the New York Times, and elsewhere, the Texas Education Agency’s director of science Christine Comer has been forced to resign. Her misdemeanor appears to have been nothing worse than forwarding details to a ‘local online community’ (whatever that means) of a lecture by a philosophy professor who testified as an expert witness in the 2005 Dover case. Read more about the story at the National Center for Science Education.
So, I looked up the Texas Education Standards, which say (amongst other things):
Science concepts. The student knows the theory of biological evolution. The student is expected to:
(A) identify evidence of change in species using fossils, DNA sequences, anatomical similarities, physiological similarities, and embryology; and
(B) illustrate the results of natural selection in speciation, diversity, phylogeny, adaptation, behavior, and extinction.
Which is all well and good, except that the standards are up for 10 year review in 2008…
